Company Buys Ad in Downtown Tokyo Touting Chinese City as ‘Home of Cherry Blossoms’

Spring is in the air, trees are starting to blossom — and a historic grudge match is once again taking on some horticultural flair.

For decades, China and Japan’s relationship has been strained over everything from the legacy of World War II to territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Now, add cherry blossoms to the mix.

While the flower has long been associated with the Land of the Rising Sun, China’s cherry blossom enthusiasts are hitting back. This month, an eye-catching ad touting China’s blooms appeared in Tokyo’s bustling Shibuya shopping district, paid for by a company from the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

News of the ad kicked up a spirited online debate in China, with related posts attracting nearly 11 million views on social media in recent days. Some defended the ad, while others said it smacked of insecurity, noting that Wuhan University’s cherry blossoms — which have grown so popular the school has had to cap visitor numbers during the blooming season — were planted from shipments from Japan.

Asked about the floral fracas, the advertiser, state-controlled Chinese Internet finance company Hanjin Bank, told The Wall Street Journal that it had placed the ad to help boost its image, along with that of Wuhan. “Cherry blossoms are a new calling card for Wuhan tourism,” the company explained. “We hope to spark attention by advertising the blossoms to the people who like cherry blossoms the most, the Japanese.”

The cherry blossom’s origin story is misty, and some scholars believe the bloom originated in the Himalayan mountains.

He Zongru, executive chairman of the China Cherry Industry Association, a group comprised of companies with links to the cherry industry, is among those passionate in his belief that the bloom originated in China. He’s set out to persuade his compatriots of the blossom’s value.

As a poor nation, China historically preferred more productive, plebeian fruit trees, such as those bearing apples, he said. “Now, though, China is wealthier, we are pursuing the Chinese Dream, and cherry blossoms can be an example of China’s renaissance,” said Mr. He, who is also chairman at Trendsee, a company that promotes cherry tree cultivation.

He added that hundreds of poems, including some dating back to the Tang Dynasty, mention the flower.

A woman poses in front of cherry blossoms at China's Wuhan University on March 8, 2016.
Photo:
Zuma Press

Apart from questions over their provenance, cherry blossoms come laden with other historical controversies, as well. Hu Xiaomin, the vice-head of Trendsee’s research group, says that the popular perception of cherry blossoms in China continues to suffer from the flower’s negative links with China’s wartime enemy, Japan. The company’s research group, she said, has decided to compete by developing its own deep crimson blossom, dubbed “China Red,” reflecting the color Chinese see as lucky.

“If we can develop our own breeds, we won’t need Japan’s cherry blossoms,” she said. “This is the true way to resist Japan and be patriotic.”

China isn’t alone in wading into a diplomatically tinged floral fracas: last spring, South Korean media claimed that a certain variety of cherry tree had, in fact, originated in South Korea, prompting fierce rebuttals from academics and online in Japan.

Even China’s staid Communist Party newspaper the People’s Daily has weighed in, declaring that the blossoms originated in China, “which has more than 2,000 years of cultivated cherry blossom tree history.”

China’s floral leap forward is getting a further boost as city governments pick up the spade, spending millions in recent years to plant thousands of cherry trees in a bid to attract tourists.

For his part, Mr. He maintains that the cherry blossom face-off isn’t just a historic question; it’s an aesthetic one as well. He praised the “more reddish pink” of some of China’s blossoms and said that while Japanese people prefer paler blooms, “the pink has a warmer look to it, so it makes for better photographs.”

At the end of the day, Ms. Hu said, the question of origin isn’t the most important. “Japan is the place that’s developed and bred cherry blossoms the best, and we should learn from them,” she says. “Blossoms don’t have borders.”